NFS

From Wikipedia:

Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed.

Note:

NFS is not encrypted. Tunnel NFS through an encrypted protocol like Kerberos or (secure) VPN when dealing with sensitive data.
Unlike Samba, NFS does not have any user authentication by default, client access is restricted by their IP-address/hostname.
NFS expects the user and/or user group IDs are the same on both the client and server. Enable NFSv4 idmapping or overrule the UID/GID manually by using anonuid/anongid together with all_squash in /etc/exports.
NFS does not support POSIX ACLs.

Installation

Both client and server only require the installation of the nfs-utils package.

It is highly recommended to use a time synchronization daemon to keep client/server clocks in sync. Without accurate clocks on all nodes, NFS can introduce unwanted delays.

Configuration

Server

Global configuration options are set in /etc/nfs.conf. Users of simple configurations should not need to edit this file.

The NFS server needs a list of exports (see exports(5) for details) which are defined in /etc/exports or /etc/exports.d/*.exports. These shares are relative to the so-called NFS root. A good security practice is to define a NFS root in a discrete directory tree which will keep users limited to that mount point. Bind mounts are used to link the share mount point to the actual directory elsewhere on the filesystem.

Consider this following example wherein:

The NFS root is /srv/nfs.
The export is /srv/nfs/music via a bind mount to the actual target .

# mkdir -p /srv/nfs/music /mnt/music
# mount --bind /mnt/music /srv/nfs/music

To make the bind mount persistent across reboots, add it to fstab:

Add directories to be shared and limit them to a range of addresses via a CIDR or hostname(s) of client machines that will be allowed to mount them in /etc/exports, e.g.:

Note: When using NFSv4, the nfs root directory is specified by the entry denoted by fsid=0, other directories must be below it. The rootdir option in the /etc/nfs.conf file has no effect on this.

Tip:

The crossmnt option makes it possible for clients to access all filesystems mounted on a filesystem marked with crossmnt and clients will not be required to mount every child export separately. Note this may not be desirable if a child is shared with a different range of addresses.
Instead of crossmnt, one can also use the nohide option on child exports so that they can be automatically mounted when a client mounts the root export. Being different from crossmnt, nohide still respects address ranges of child exports.
Use an asterisk (*) to allow access from any interface.

It should be noted that modifying /etc/exports while the server is running will require a re-export for changes to take effect:

# exportfs -arv

To view the current loaded exports state in more detail, use:

# exportfs -v

For more information about all available options see exports(5).

Note: If the target export is a tmpfs filesystem, the fsid=1 option is required.

Starting the server

Start and enable .

Restricting NFS to interfaces/IPs

By default, starting will listen for connections on all network interfaces, regardless of /etc/exports. This can be changed by defining which IPs and/or hostnames to listen on.

Restart to apply the changes immediately.

Firewall configuration

To enable access through a firewall, TCP and UDP ports , , and may need to be opened when using the default configuration; use rpcinfo -p to examine the exact ports in use on the server:

When using NFSv4, make sure TCP port is open. No other port opening should be required:

When using an older NFS version, make sure other ports are open:

# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 111 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 2049 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 20048 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 111 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 2049 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 20048 -j ACCEPT

To have this configuration load on every system start, edit to include the following lines:

/etc/iptables/iptables.rules

-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 111 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 2049 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 20048 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 111 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 2049 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 20048 -j ACCEPT

The previous commands can be saved by executing:

# iptables-save > /etc/iptables/iptables.rules

If using NFSv3 and the above listed static ports for and the following ports may also need to be added to the configuration:

To apply changes, Restart .

Enabling NFSv4 idmapping

Note:

NFSv4 idmapping does not work with the default sec=sys mount option. ^{[dead link 2022-09-22 ⓘ]}
NFSv4 idmapping needs to be enabled on both the client and server.
Another option is to make sure the user and group IDs (UID and GID) match on both the client and server.
Enabling/starting nfs-idmapd.service should not be needed as it has been replaced with a new id mapper:

# dmesg | grep id_resolver

[ 3238.356001] NFS: Registering the id_resolver key type
[ 3238.356009] Key type id_resolver registered

The NFSv4 protocol represents the local system's UID and GID values on the wire as strings of the form . The process of translating from UID to string and string to UID is referred to as ID mapping. See for details.

Even though idmapd may be running, it may not be fully enabled. If or returns Y on a client/server, enable it by:

On the client:

# echo N > /sys/module/nfs/parameters/nfs4_disable_idmapping

On the server:

# echo N > /sys/module/nfsd/parameters/nfs4_disable_idmapping

Set as module option to make this change permanent, i.e.:

To fully use idmapping, make sure the domain is configured in on both the server and the client:

See for details.

Client

Users intending to use NFS4 with Kerberos need to start and enable nfs-client.target.

Manual mounting

For NFSv3 use this command to show the server's exported file systems:

$ showmount -e servername

For NFSv4 mount the root NFS directory and look around for available mounts:

# mount servername:/ /mountpoint/on/client

Then mount omitting the server's NFS export root:

# mount -t nfs -o vers=4 servername:/music /mountpoint/on/client

If mount fails try including the server's export root (required for Debian/RHEL/SLES, some distributions need instead of ):

# mount -t nfs -o vers=4 servername:/srv/nfs/music /mountpoint/on/client

Mount using /etc/fstab

Using fstab is useful for a server which is always on, and the NFS shares are available whenever the client boots up. Edit file, and add an appropriate line reflecting the setup. Again, the server's NFS export root is omitted.

Some additional mount options to consider:

rsize and wsize: The value is the number of bytes used when reading from the server. The wsize value is the number of bytes used when writing to the server. By default, if these options are not specified, the client and server negotiate the largest values they can both support (see for details). After changing these values, it is recommended to test the performance (see #Performance tuning).
soft or hard: Determines the recovery behaviour of the NFS client after an NFS request times out. If neither option is specified (or if the option is specified), NFS requests are retried indefinitely. If the soft option is specified, then the NFS client fails a NFS request after retrans retransmissions have been sent, causing the NFS client to return an error to the calling application.

timeo: The value is the amount of time, in tenths of a second, to wait before resending a transmission after an RPC timeout. The default value for NFS over TCP is 600 (60 seconds). After the first timeout, the timeout value is doubled for each retry for a maximum of 60 seconds or until a major timeout occurs. If connecting to a slow server or over a busy network, better stability can be achieved by increasing this timeout value.
retrans: The number of times the NFS client retries a request before it attempts further recovery action. If the option is not specified, the NFS client tries each request three times. The NFS client generates a "server not responding" message after retrans retries, then attempts further recovery (depending on whether the hard mount option is in effect).
_netdev: The option tells the system to wait until the network is up before trying to mount the share - systemd assumes this for NFS.

Mount using /etc/fstab with systemd

Another method is using the x-systemd.automount option which mounts the filesystem upon access:

To make systemd aware of the changes to fstab, reload systemd and restart .

As systemd unit

Create a new file inside , e.g. . See for details.

Note: Make sure the filename corresponds to the mountpoint you want to use. E.g. the unit name mnt-home.mount can only be used if you are going to mount the share under /mnt/home. Otherwise the following error might occur: systemd[1]: mnt-home.mount: Where= setting does not match unit name. Refusing.. If the mountpoint contains non-ASCII characters, use systemd-escape).

path to share

path to mount the share

share mounting options

Note:

Network mount units automatically acquire After dependencies on remote-fs-pre.target, network.target and network-online.target, and gain a Before dependency on remote-fs.target unless nofail mount option is set. Towards the latter a Wants unit is added as well.
Append noauto to Options preventing automatically mount during boot (unless it is pulled in by some other unit).
If you want to use a hostname for the server you want to share (instead of an IP address), add nss-lookup.target to After. This might avoid mount errors at boot time that do not arise when testing the unit.

To use , start the unit and enable it to run on system boot.

automount

To automatically mount a share, one may use the following automount unit:

Disable/stop the unit, and enable/start to automount the share when the mount path is being accessed.

Mount using autofs

Using autofs is useful when multiple machines want to connect via NFS; they could both be clients as well as servers. The reason this method is preferable over the earlier one is that if the server is switched off, the client will not throw errors about being unable to find NFS shares. See autofs#NFS network mounts for details.

Tips and tricks

Performance tuning

When using NFS on a network with a significant number of clients one may increase the default NFS threads from 8 to 16 or even a higher, depending on the server/network requirements:

/etc/nfs.conf

[nfsd]
threads=16

It may be necessary to tune the and wsize mount options to meet the requirements of the network configuration.

In recent linux kernels (>2.6.18) the size of I/O operations allowed by the NFS server (default max block size) varies depending on RAM size, with a maximum of 1M (1048576 bytes), the max block size of the server will be used even if nfs clients requires bigger and wsize. See https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/5/html/5.8_technical_notes/known_issues-kernel It is possible to change the default max block size allowed by the server by writing to the before starting nfsd. For example, the following command restores the previous default iosize of 32k:

# echo 32768 > /proc/fs/nfsd/max_block_size

To make the change permanent, create a systemd-tmpfile:

/etc/tmpfiles.d/nfsd-block-size.conf

w /proc/fs/nfsd/max_block_size - - - - 32768

To mount with the increased and wsize mount options:

# mount -t nfs -o rsize=32768,wsize=32768,vers=4 servername:/srv/nfs/music /mountpoint/on/client

Furthermore, despite the violation of NFS protocol, setting instead of or may potentially achieve a significant performance gain especially on spinning disks. Configure exports with this option and then execute to apply.

Automatic mount handling

This trick is useful for NFS-shares on a wireless network and/or on a network that may be unreliable. If the NFS host becomes unreachable, the NFS share will be unmounted to hopefully prevent system hangs when using the mount option .

Make sure that the NFS mount points are correctly indicated in fstab:

Note:

Use hostnames in fstab for this to work, not IP addresses.
In order to mount NFS shares with non-root users the users option has to be added.
The noauto mount option tells systemd to not automatically mount the shares at boot, otherwise this may cause the boot process to stall.

Create the script that will be used by cron or systemd/Timers to use ICMP ping to check if the NFS host is reachable:

/usr/local/bin/auto_share

#!/bin/bash

function net_umount {
  umount -l -f $1 &>/dev/null
}

function net_mount {
  mountpoint -q $1 || mount $1
}

NET_MOUNTS=$(sed -e '/^.*#/d' -e '/^.*:/!d' -e 's/\t/ /g' /etc/fstab | tr -s " ")

\n'b printf %s "$NET_MOUNTS" | while IFS= read -r line do SERVER=$(echo $line | cut -f1 -d":") MOUNT_POINT=$(echo $line | cut -f2 -d" ") # Check if server already tested if [[ "${server_ok[@]}" =~ "${SERVER}" ]]; then # The server is up, make sure the share are mounted net_mount $MOUNT_POINT elif [[ "${server_notok[@]}" =~ "${SERVER}" ]]; then # The server could not be reached, unmount the share net_umount $MOUNT_POINT else # Check if the server is reachable ping -c 1 "${SERVER}" &>/dev/null if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then server_notok[${#server_notok[@]}]=$SERVER # The server could not be reached, unmount the share net_umount $MOUNT_POINT else server_ok[${#server_ok[@]}]=$SERVER # The server is up, make sure the share are mounted net_mount $MOUNT_POINT fi fi done

Make sure the script is executable.

Next check configure the script to run every X, in the examples below this is every minute.

systemd/Timers

Finally, enable and start .

Using a NetworkManager dispatcher

NetworkManager can also be configured to run a script on network status change.

The easiest method for mount shares on network status change is to symlink the script:

# ln -s /usr/local/bin/auto_share /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/30-nfs.sh

However, in that particular case unmounting will happen only after the network connection has already been disabled, which is unclean and may result in effects like freezing of KDE Plasma applets.

The following script safely unmounts the NFS shares before the relevant network connection is disabled by listening for the , and events, make sure the script is executable:

Note: This script ignores mounts with the noauto option, remove this mount option or use auto to allow the dispatcher to manage these mounts.

Create a symlink inside to catch the events:

# ln -s /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/30-nfs.sh /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/pre-down.d/30-nfs.sh

Troubleshooting

There is a dedicated article NFS/Troubleshooting.

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NFS

Installation

Configuration

Server

Starting the server

Restricting NFS to interfaces/IPs

Firewall configuration

Enabling NFSv4 idmapping

Client

Manual mounting

Mount using /etc/fstab

Mount using /etc/fstab with systemd

As systemd unit

automount

Mount using autofs

Tips and tricks

Performance tuning

Automatic mount handling

systemd/Timers

Using a NetworkManager dispatcher

Troubleshooting

See also